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The 2019 Mozambique Elections on Social Media

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The 2019 Mozambique Elections on Social Media NEW FRONTIERS THE 2019 MOZAMBIQUE ELECTIONS ON SOCIAL MEDIA ELLIOT JONES HARRY CARR JOSH SMITH ALEX KRASODOMSKI-JONES JANUARY 2020 Open Access. Some rights reserved. As the publisher of this work, Demos wants to encourage the circulation of our work as widely as possible while retaining the copyright. We therefore have an open access policy which enables anyone to access our content online without charge. Anyone can download, save, perform or distribute this work in any format, including translation, without written permission. This is subject to the terms of the Demos licence found at the back of this publication. Its main conditions are: • Demos and the author(s) are credited • This summary and the address www.demos.co.uk are displayed • The text is not altered and is used in full • The work is not resold • A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to Demos. You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the licence. Demos gratefully acknowledges the work of Creative Commons in inspiring our approach to copyright. To find out more go to www.creativecommons.org This project is supported by EISA: Published by Demos January 2020 © Demos. Some rights reserved. 76 Vincent Square, London, SW1P 2PD T: 020 3878 3955 [email protected] www.demos.co.uk Charity number 1042046 2 7 CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS PAGE 4 INTRODUCTION PAGE 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY PAGE 6 THE ELECTION PAGE 8 PLATFORM STUDIES: TWITTER PAGE 10 FACEBOOK PAGE 22 YOUTUBE PAGE 25 WHATSAPP PAGE 33 CONCLUSIONS PAGE 36 APPENDIX PAGE 37 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Trying to make sense of major political events through social media is impossible without the support of local knowledge and regional expertise. We are indebted to Aslak Orre at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Bergen and to Thais Portilho for steering our analysis and providing vital language work. We are also grateful to Egidio Guambe, Ericino de Salema and Domingos do Rosário at EISA for their invaluable support, guidance and feedback, and to Stanley Phillipson Brown for his keen-eyed review. All mistakes remain the responsibility of the authors. 4 INTRODUCTION EISA-Mozambique commissioned Demos to and to organise and coordinate elements of political undertake this piece of research in September 2019, activity, and new opportunities for parties to attempt ahead of the Mozambique general election held to influence the popular vote. This was the case in on 15 October 2019 – the sixth multi-party general Mozambique. The 2019 election, eventually won by election in Mozambique’s democratic history. the incumbent party FRELIMO and its leader Filipe Nyusi, was fought online as well as off. This report presents the results of a six week study of digital communication platforms during the This report set out to examine the kinds of activity 2019 Mozambique election. It is the latest piece of taking place on online platforms during the 2019 Demos research examining the ways in which the election, and takes in four of the major platforms: rise of digital technologies has impacted democratic Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and WhatsApp. It processes around the world. Whether in the UK, presents a mixed-methods approach: where Nigeria, the DRC or Mozambique, the use of quantitative methods of data collection and social media in elections now receives widespread analysis were not possible, research was supported attention from traditional media for its role in through the qualitative monitoring of groups and informing, engaging and influencing citizens. communities. Mozambique shows many of the conditions that In many ways, this research presents a familiar have proven to be fertile for producing changes in story: the rise of mobile-first digital platforms is political behaviour.1 The country is experiencing a transforming the ways in which voters are able major boom in digital communications driven by to access, discuss and disseminate information. accelerating internet and mobile penetration rates. Significant amounts of political campaigning in Latest estimates suggest one in two Mozambique Mozambique is now taking place in online spaces. citizens own a mobile phone and approximately There is, however, more evidence that the rise of 20% of Mozambique citizens are now internet users, digital politics is bringing its own problems: low- concentrated in the major urban centres of Maputo, quality information is rife, and transparency and Matola, Beira, Quelimane and Nampula.2 The accountability for that information is poor. ‘Fake growth of digital communication and particularly the news’ remains a feature of politics online. And as the uptake in the use of social media has been driven by use of closed networks like WhatsApp for politics handheld devices: just one percent of Mozambique becomes more widespread, political messaging and citizens use social media outside of their mobile debate becomes decreasingly transparent and more device, with the majority of internet usage made difficult to explore and understand. up by mobile internet use. Facebook and YouTube remain the most widely used social media platforms This report begins with an overview of the political and both continue to grow in the country, while context in which the 2019 Mozambique general WhatsApp is the most widely used messaging election was held, before exploring the use of platform. different social media platforms in turn. We finish the report with conclusions indicating how this Around the world, the rise of these digital platforms report might be leveraged by EISA and to influence and tools has provided new opportunities for and communicate with Mozambicans using new communities to be exposed to political messaging technology. 1 Tsandzana, Urban youth and social networks in Mozambique: the political participation of the helpless connected (Comunicação e Sociedade, vol. 34, 2018) 2 WeAreSocial Digital, Mozambique (2019) 5 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The goal of this report is to provide EISA reference to the hidden debts scandal. with a view of the online media ecosystem in Mozambique, identifying the key voices, • Perhaps unsurprisingly given the relative networks and themes in the Mozambique penetration of Twitter in Mozambique, digital landscape around the 2019 general many of the most widely shared tweets election. regarding the election were from foreign journalists and other observers. However, To do this, we looked at discussion of the there is evidence of an emerging class election, electoral issues, and the party’s own of domestic journalists and bloggers election material across Facebook pages, specialising in social media content Twitter, Youtube and WhatsApp groups. creation, with lesser known commentators Researchers particularly looked into how and civil society actors gaining traction gender, electoral violence, and the region during the election period. of Cabo Delgado featured in the election campaign. • Some of the issues facing Mozambique over the election period that one might • On Twitter and Facebook, FRELIMO have expected to dominate conversation have by far the most professional and on social media garnered relatively little sophisticated digital strategy of the main engagement - allegations of electoral political parties. They have multiple times violence and the apparent Islamist more followers than any other party, and insurgency in Cabo Delgado province were considerable message discipline focusing not frequently mentioned. Where reference on their main slogans and positive was made to these issues, it tended to messages around their leader Filipe be journalistic in nature - perhaps as the Nyusi. Blog posts claiming to represent people affected first hand tend to be supporters from different provinces the least likely to have access to social are shared, repeating FRELIMO’s key media, or due to government control of messages. information related to insurgency. • In contrast, RENAMO makes almost no use • On Youtube, FRELIMO appears to be the of Twitter. On Facebook, their messaging only political party with its own channel, is much less consistent, with a variety of but their professional - if repetitive - styles of posts. Much of their content is videos for the most part failed to cut resharing posts and videos submitted by through. Miramar news videos related activists. to RENAMO were particularly popular - perhaps due to the dearth of information • FRELIMO dominates the wider on the party otherwise available in the conversation on Twitter, with the plurality likes of FRELIMO’s official broadcasts of tweets relating to them. But the majority and videos produced by the national of these posts are critical of Frelimo, public broadcaster TVM. By far the most with many involving ‘gallows humour’, successful Youtube content for any political making jokes for example about the party - and indeed the most watched video race being rigged - though there is also collected - was the pro-FRELIMO music straightforward criticism and allegations of video by Mr. Bow. nepotism and corruption, particularly with 6 • RENAMO supporters were disproportionately represented in comments on Youtube, with one in three including a pro-RENAMO message, compared with 10% which were pro- FRELIMO. • Finally, we studied the use of WhatsApp - almost certainly the most widely used messaging application in Mozambique. We found WhatsApp performed three major roles - as a news source, sharing stories before the election and the results as they were announced; as a platform to document cases of electoral malpractice, violence and
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